Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/09/children_s_language_development_talk_and_listen_to_them_from_birth.html

by kumarski • 13 years ago

472 276 13 years ago

slate.com

Mindless2112• 13 years ago

The importance of talking with your children during early development was also covered on an episode[1] of Lexicon Valley (referencing the same research data as this article) for those interested.

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2013/0...

kumarski• 13 years ago

grazie. I was looking for this one.

wallflower• 13 years ago

I recently stopped to congratulate a young mother pushing her toddler in a stroller. The woman had been talking to her barely verbal daughter all the way up the block, pointing out things they had passed, asking questions like "What color are those flowers?" and talking about what they would do when they got to the park. This is a rare occurrence in my Brooklyn neighborhood, I told her. All too often, the mothers and nannies I see are tuned in to their cellphones, BlackBerrys and iPods, not their young children.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/health/29brod.html?ref=sci...

pg• 13 years ago

I don't know whether this is true, but it feels true, and I've been operating as if it were.

clarkm8• 13 years ago

You're right -- it feels true, which probably explains why it has so much staying power. Though the idea has been around for decades, it was really popularized by Hart and Risley in the 90s. However, it has been popping even more frequently over the past couple years.

A few months ago, when a similar article ran in the New York Times, Steven Pinked opined:

The Blank Slate lives: Yet another story on parent-child correlations that dares not mention the g-word

https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/322367630331740160

ShardPhoenix• 13 years ago

Just because genetics is important doesn't mean that talking doesn't help - and the difference is that talking is in the parents' control.

zizee• 13 years ago

It's weird how people are happy to say genetics plays a hand in the limits of human abilities, but when it comes to talk about intelligence, there are so many people in denial.

Perhaps it is just that you can't sell as many self help books if a lot of our brain's wiring is preordained.

Alex39174• 13 years ago

Yet another story on parent-child correlations that dares not mention the g-word

Except for that the Hart & Risley study measured the impact of genetics, and found it to be insignificant. Maybe Pinker should try actually reading the studies he's criticizing instead of just reading about them in the paper.

philwelch3• 13 years ago

If there are genetic components to intelligence, presumably you can't do anything about them after you've had kids so what do they matter?

Alex39174• 13 years ago

C.f. the cited book by Hart & Risley, Meaningful Differences In The Everyday Experiences of Young American Children.

"The more parents talked to their children, the faster the children's vocabularies were growing and the higher children's IQ test scores at age 3 and later. [...] [By age 4], an average child in a professional family would have the accumulated experience with almost 45 million words, an average child in a working-class family would have accumulated experience with 26 million words, and an average child in a welfare family would have accumulated experience with 13 million words. [...] Just to provide an average welfare child with an amount of weekly language experience equal to that of an average working-class child would require 41 hours per week of out-of-home experience as rich in words addressed to the child as that in an average professional home. [...] By the time children are 4 years old, intervention programs come too late and can provide too little experience to make up for the past."

The basic idea is that the best determiner of academic success is the number of words per day spoken to the child (listening to audio/tv doesn't work, and is generally thought to be harmful, especially before age 3.) Essentially by the time kids get to kindergarten, there is already a 2+ year achievement gap between wealthy kids and poor kids, mostly for this reason. In addition to being enormous on its own, this gap then compounds greatly because of tracking, which tends to be introduced in some form or another starting around age six:

"We found that first-grade ability-group placement can have persistent effects on children's achievement in school over a period of several years and may shape the expectations of children's performance held by significant others, such as parents and teachers. Whether these effects are instructional, social, or institutional, they are real, and they have implications for children's future schooling trajectories. [...] Instructional grouping may have the unintended effect of increasing inequalities in educational outcomes, largely by creating inequalities in educational resources and rewards." (I forget the author, but this is quoting in Riordan's book Equality and Achievement in the relevant section.)

Anyway I'd definitely recommend reading Meaningful Differences, in addition to being a great example of how science should be done in terms of robust methodology, it's also one of the most insightful and important scientific findings of the last hundred years.

The one thing I'd add though is that in addition to the total volume of language, which is the most important variable, there are a few other counterintuitive findings worth knowing about. E.g. reading aloud to your kids doesn't actually benefit their language skills, unless you purposely use certain linguistic constructs while reading to them. And there are other linguistic features you can use that are beneficial, that you wouldn't necessarily think to use without knowing the research, but I'll stop there though so as not to spoil it.

rizzom5000• 13 years ago

That's interesting, but I think there are also studies that show childhood IQ tests don't correlate very well to adolescent or adult IQ tests - which, as others studies have shown, are tests that do correlate well to success/happiness/etc. over lifetimes.

This study would be a lot more interesting if it followed its sample into adulthood and compared IQ scores over time - it very well may do that, it's just not clear from the article that there is very much meaning here when put into context with other studies on childhood IQ.

codex2• 13 years ago

How did the researchers determine causation? What if there is simply a gene for strong language which is responsible both for the parents' financial success and the child's academic success, and the extra words were simply a by product?

waveman2• 13 years ago

The studies seem to be confusing causation and correlation. They seem to assuming that there must be an environmental cause for the differences in people's IQs. This may seem like a stupid assumption to make, but a lot of people in the social sciences take this as a given, even though the weight of evidence is strongly against it.

Perhaps I have missed something, but I would expect that, if they did not have ideological blinkers on they would be saying things like:

"We are taking particular care to separate environmental and genetic factors here by including adopted children, [identical] twins reared separately, other children raised by other than biological relatives".

But I see none of this at all here.

You may be interested to read "The Nurture Assumption" for a detailed analysis of the effect of parents on their children. The basic conclusion is that if you do not seriously abuse your children you don't affect them much one way or the other. Steve Pinker's book "The Blank Slate" is also relevant.

enra• 13 years ago

Completely empirical:

My nephew started speaking early and quite well. He can name and knows lot of things, tens or hundreds of different animals, what he does, wants etc. Some other kids I've seen don't talk at all or they don't know any words.

It seems to me it's because my sister and his husband talk with him all the time, and explain when they're doing something together. I've been trying to do the same and talk normally with him and not talk down to him or some kid nonsense. He talks back and says if he doesn't understand.

adventured• 13 years ago

I've always believed smart (developed capability) is taught, and genius (typically narrow high level mental capability) is born. And that all people at birth, except the relative few born with mental handicaps, are capable of being smart.

A 100 to 115 IQ maxed out on potential and perspiration will get you very far in life.

Kudzu_Bob12• 13 years ago

A 100 to 115 IQ maxed out on potential will get you very far in life, but not as far as a 130 to 145 IQ maxed out on potential will.

gault8121• 13 years ago

The process of expressing statements creates stronger synaptic connections (relative to reading statements). Communication is an essential part of learning and retaining ideas.

malandrew2• 13 years ago

FWIW language gives children a tool with which they can discuss and more importantly reason about abstract concepts. The sooner you acquire a rich and varied vocabulary the sooner you can form a rich understanding about the phenomena in the world around you. Since kids learn fastest when they are young and that slows with age, a strong grasp of language means that they can absorb and understand more abstractions sooner. Measures of betweenness, distance, centrality and distance for nodes in a child's mental graph of abstractions are all likely to be better when you have a richer vocabulary at a young age. Even edges between abstractions can be linguistic abstractions like similes and metaphors, giving a child a quickness in recall of well understood abstractions to aid in the processing and understanding of novel concepts.

eulerphi3• 13 years ago

Edges between abstractions? You lost me with your abstraction.

opminion• 13 years ago

This is discussed by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate.

tezza• 13 years ago

I also do not know if this is true. It seems safe to presume that it is at least a mild benefit because it is cheap and easy to do. If it were more costly in terms of child aide resourcing, then we'd have to look a lot closer at whether we should divert resources to speak-to-the-child programs.

---

Some schooling like Steiner education actively de-emphasises speaking to your children until 6+.

Steiner teachers would not answer a child with the factual answer, but instead posing another question.

  Child:          "Mum, why do planes fly in the sky?"
  Steiner Parent: "I Wonder?"

The Steiner thinking is that by posing another question you don't 'crimp' the childs' creativity. This is strictly age related and once the child is a bit older the conversation becomes more mainstream.

pitt1980• 13 years ago

that seems to jive well with the article about not talking to your kid in directives:

"In low-income households, parents commonly speak to their children in simple commands, and participant Aneisha Newell said the week on directives was particularly significant to her. “Instead of saying, ‘go put on your shoes,’ I can say, ‘All right, it’s time to go. What else do you need? … That gives my child the chance to respond, and say, ‘shoes,’ ” said Newell, 25, who has a 4-year-old daughter and a 10-month-old son and works for a company providing recess supervision and after-school activities in Chicago Public Schools.

Newell said many of her friends and relatives think she’s crazy for talking to her daughter as if she’s an adult. “I can quote this: ‘Neisha, no one wants to sit and talk to the kids like they understand’ That’s basically the response I get."

(I hate that such a thought provoking article couldn't get a better discussion than a college freshman debate over nature v nurture)

in my experience that's one of the best take aways from the articles,

I find even really educated parents tend to give alot of commands to their kids, I would recommend mixing that up

my daughter just entered the 'why' stage,

the other day, I flipped it around and for 10 or so minutes, even thing she would ask say, I would ask her 'why?'

it was really facinating

I think it ended with:

"because I am a big girl"

"why"

"because I pee on the potty"

"ha ha, yeah I guess so"

----------------------------------

second thought

I've often heard that learning a second language forces you to relearn the basics of the english language

similarly, I think that putting thought in how to comminicate with little kids forces you how to relearn communication skills with all people

book recommendation: http://www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Kids-Will-Listen/dp/038057000...

one of the big take aways from that book was not to invalidate your kids feelings, even if it seems silly or stupid to you

I find that to be a really useful comminication tip with adults too

and one the most people don't do a very good job with

PeterisP• 13 years ago

The original article also advocates facilitating the child to respond in detail, not simply monologues by a parent. I wouldn't call it de-emphasising speaking; the article describes pretty much the same actions as you do, but labels it 'emphasising', not 'de-emphasising'.

Sure, you need to hold your tongue often to provoke more dialogue (not finish the kids sentences instead of him/her, etc); but in the end it still means much more talking than the 'default' amount.

drcode• 13 years ago

I feel like every time a science article gets attention just because it "feels true" and which is based on just another retrospective cohort study (which can't untangle causation) it sends the wrong message to the public about what real substantive scientific research is like/needs to be like.

seiji• 13 years ago

The same goes for if you want to teach your dog a crazy number of things casually (upstairs, downstairs, names of people, names of toys, go-to-crate, names of rooms, difference between food and water bowls, ...).

frankosaurus• 13 years ago

I've read many articles recently that make similar claims. Chapter 10 of NurtureShock talks about this. Anecdotally, the idea seems to be growing in popularity idea among my fellow parents.

One way to capitalize on this would be to create a mobile app which functions like a pedometer, except it counts the number of words you speak to your child. Parents could talk to their kids during playtime, and the device would listen in and use natural language processing to interpret the conversation. Parents would later get a report on the frequency, complexity, and novelty of the words used. They could chart progress over time.

devindotcom• 13 years ago

As I read your comment I was afraid you were going to suggest an app that speaks to your child for you, but I was pleasantly surprised. I like the idea.

jpadkins• 13 years ago

why are you afraid of that idea?

ausjke2• 13 years ago

the real deep thinkers, are not necessary good at conversation I believe, actually there is a saying "the _real_ smart people don't speak much, and they usually look dumb" sorry I did not bother to read the article, the title stopped me from reading it.

eruditely• 13 years ago

I did not bother to read the article

This is probably why you're not a 'real think er', and no I don't really agree with the article either.

ausjke2• 13 years ago

Hmm i did not mean i am a deep thinker,just put on my quick thoughts after reading all the comments here,at least i dont down vote others by assumption

acheron• 13 years ago

"Real thinkers" should know better than to read an article in Slate...

utopkara• 13 years ago

Probably any conversation is good, but conversation that carefully fuels curiosity is fun and it also induces a self-sustaining habit: http://www.jonathanmugan.com/CuriosityCycle/

thenerdfiles• 13 years ago

Uh.

"Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination." — L.W.

But in the end, when you've got a government solicited to diminish your powers, nothing beats a Classical education.

a3voices2• 13 years ago

I think it's also the same with pet dogs, at least with the intelligent breeds. If you have a border collie, talking to it a lot makes it smarter. At least it seems that way.

Kudzu_Bob12• 13 years ago

You should write that up and submit it to Slate. I'm sure that they would publish it.

sharkweek• 13 years ago

My boss's son is one of the smartest 18 month old kids I have ever met. He communication levels are through the roof, and for words he might not be able to say, or things he might not be able to express, he knows rudimentary sign language to communicate, e.g., he has a hand signal for "I'm tired" or "I'm hungry" -- he almost never has to cry to show he needs something.

It's really quite impressive.

dinkumthinkum2• 13 years ago

Do you have children? I know ostensibly that is irrelevant but what you're describing is good and impressive but it's probably not as uncommon as you think. Baby sign language is pretty popular in the parenting world. Actually, many babies can do that at much earlier ages. Not to detract anything, just saying ... :)

eitally• 13 years ago

No kidding. One of the first epiphanies parents have is the fact that their children are as smart as they are -- all they lack is experience. :)

baq2• 13 years ago

my 15-month daughter runs to her high chair when she's hungry. sometimes she skips the chair and runs directly to the fridge. i don't think it's unusual, i hear the same things from my friends.

one related anectode: my boss' 3-yo son said to him, 'dad, i'm not stupid, i'm just small' :)

Theodores2• 13 years ago

What took your daughter so long?

Quite a few pets sit by their kitchen feeding bowls when they get hungry. They learn to do this within a lot less time than 15 months.

dreamdu5t• 13 years ago

Conversation or vocabulary? It seems to me they conflate the two simply because conversation time is correlated with higher vocabulary. Do the studies control for this?

girvo2• 13 years ago

My parents like to tell the storiy of my childhood. Basically, I used to think I was an adult (despite being 5) and talk to everyone. The best part, is that I _was_ treated like an adult, and am pretty intelligent these days as well :) More importantly, it gave me confidence from an early age. That's the best gift I think a child can be given, especially one that is into "fringe" pursuits.

eulerphi3• 13 years ago

I cringed when I read you saying 'am pretty intelligent these days' Einstein, Euler, Reimann realized that the subjects and challenges were truly important, not their intelligence. Solve life, don't inflate self.

girvo2• 13 years ago

Nothing I work on is truly important. :)

And I actually mean that. Not yet. Soon, perhaps, but not now. And I said "pretty intelligent", not that I was up there with the greats. I find it interesting you took that from my post!

ethyl66• 13 years ago

"At home there was a game that all the parents played with their children. It was called, What Did You See? Mara was about Dann’s age when she was first called into her father’s room one evening, where he sat in his big carved and coloured chair. He said to her, ‘And now we are going to play a game. What was the thing you liked best today?’

At first she chattered: ‘I played with my cousin . . . I was out with Shera in the garden . . . I made a stone house.’ And then he had said, ‘Tell me about the house.’ And she said, ‘I made a house of the stones that come from the river bed.’ And he said, ‘Now tell me about the stones.’ And she said, ‘They were mostly smooth stones, but some were sharp and had different shapes.’ ‘Tell me what the stones looked like, what colour they were, what did they feel like.’

And by the time the game ended she knew why some stones were smooth and some sharp and why they were different colours, some cracked, some so small they were almost sand. She knew how rivers rolled stones along and how some of them came from far away. She knew that the river had once been twice as wide as it was now. There seemed no end to what she knew, and yet her father had not told her much, but kept asking questions so she found the answers in herself. Like, ‘Why do you think some stones are smooth and round and some still sharp?’ And she thought and replied, ‘Some have been in the water a long time, rubbing against other stones, and some have only just been broken off bigger stones.’ Every evening, either her father or her mother called her in for What Did You See? She loved it. During the day, playing outside or with her toys, alone or with other children, she found herself thinking, Now notice what you are doing, so you can tell them tonight what you saw.

She had thought that the game did not change; but then one evening she was there when her little brother was first asked, What Did You See? and she knew just how much the game had changed for her. Because now it was not just What Did You See? but: What were you thinking? What made you think that? Are you sure that thought is true?

When she became seven, not long ago, and it was time for school, she was in a room with about twenty children – all from her family or from the Big Family – and the teacher, her mother’s sister, said, ‘And now the game: What Did You See?’

Most of the children had played the game since they were tiny; but some had not, and they were pitied by the ones that had, for they did not notice much and were often silent when the others said, ‘I saw . . .’, whatever it was. Mara was at first upset that this game played with so many at once was simpler, more babyish, than when she was with her parents. It was like going right back to the earliest stages of the game: ‘What did you see?’ ‘I saw a bird.’ ‘What kind of a bird?’ ‘It was black and white and had a yellow beak.’ ‘What shape of beak? Why do you think the beak is shaped like that?’

Then she saw what she was supposed to be understanding: Why did one child see this and the other that? Why did it sometimes need several children to see everything about a stone or a bird or a person?"

--Doris Lessing, "Mara and Dann" (Hat tip: http://lesswrong.com/lw/43w/rationality_quotes_february_2011...)

rcfox• 13 years ago

Half tongue-in-cheek, half serious, but all I could think of while reading the first paragraphs was, "Playing all of those text adventure games has trained me to be a better parent!"

mynameishere• 13 years ago

But then, if children were born smart, because they have smart parents, it would follow that more, and more complex, conversations would ensue. Just pointing out the obvious.

Establishing causation would require some pretty grievous, and expensive, social intervention. "Stolen generations" or similar would be the accusation decades after the inevitable failure of such policies.

But keep dreaming, Slate.

ianb• 13 years ago

I am disappointed when I hear the term "socio-economic factors" in discussions of education. First, as if "economic" wasn't enough you add in "socio" to create a term that means "factors coming from every part of a person's life". Of course there are socio-economic factors.

But I dislike it particularly because often it feels like a statement: we don't know what the causes are (which is why we make the weakest possible claim by using this incredibly expansive category), and we aren't going to try to find out.

So I particularly appreciate this program, and the research it is based upon. We have a pretty well identified phenomena: talking a lot to kids, at a young age, helps them. A lot. And some people talk to their kids a lot more than other people. We should delight in this finding! We have a pretty clear way to identify a lot of kids whose lives could be greatly improved through changes in their parents' behavior, and that change is widely accessible.

It's this kind of finding that penetrates "socio-economic factors" and in the process identifies something actionable.

ballard• 13 years ago

Some of the best hackers &| hustlers I know come from average to slightly-below average backgrounds. The biggest challenge for anyone, given any background, is what they tell themselves they can't do.

In addition to talking, it's important that the parent is a decent human-being. An awful person interacting with a kid probably does more harm than good. I don't think there's much correlation with decency and socioeconomics.

"Give me guys that are poor, smart, and hungry and no feelings." - Gordon Gekko

Kudzu_Bob12• 13 years ago

When you say that some of the best hacker and hustlers that you know come from unimpressive backgrounds, does "some" mean "most" or "a few" or "hardly any"?

electrograv2• 13 years ago

Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly. While I'm sure talking to ones children contributes in a massively positive way to their IQ, I think it's extremely inaccurate and ignorant to the existence of real-world outliers to claim that it's the only factor.

To provide just one example (out of many, I'm sure): I was born into a very poor (far below poverty level) working class family that was extremely techno-phobic. Despite being actively discouraged almost throughout my childhood of pursuing an intellectual career, I always had an intrinsic motivation and desire to learn and create tech-related things. This ultimately lead to where I am now, as a software engineer (and I'm definitely the only one like this from my family, a clear outlier).

To this day I can't come up with a single environmental influence that explains this -- and believe me, I've tried. I don't mean for this example to detract from the positive message of the article -- that talking to children is very beneficial to their cognitive development (obviously) -- but hopefully to demonstrate that it's a lot more complex than just environmental factors.

aptwebapps2• 13 years ago

This is a useless nitpick. It's not a scientific treatise, it's a public service message to try to change people's behavior.

I don't believe for a second that the doctor believes that intelligence has no inherited component whatsoever. She is dealing with a problem in the real world using what tools she has at her disposal.

Edit: Responding jamesaguilar's and true_religion's point about the title. Yes, that's true. I had just read the article and the title wasn't in the forefront of my mind. But when you get a title like that, you simply can't know whether it is meant as a bald statement or rather as something to pique the interest (or as link bait, if you aren't feeling charitable). So, if you elect to click the link, read the article to find out!

true_religion• 13 years ago

Public service announcements should at the very least not contain false information in their titles.

jamesaguilar• 13 years ago

I don't know if it really qualifies as a nitpick to directly contradict the article's title.

0110111004• 13 years ago

So we "simply can't know" whether the title should be taken at face value, but at the same time the parent's point is a "useless nitpick" because it's irrelevant to the main point of the article. Nice.

If we "simply can't know" what the point is, then how do you decide what's relevant?

mathattack• 13 years ago

Exactly. This is one determinant of intelligence that we can impact, but it's not the sole determinant of intelligence.

crygin• 13 years ago

Congratulations, you've discovered the bell curve (plus a healthy dose of physical attributes that provide you with positive advantages in our society). We congratulate you for being on the nice side of it.

cmyr• 13 years ago

Those words are salon's, not the researchers, and they're a headline at that. I wouldn't assume that "it's nurture!" is the ultimate conclusion of this work. I'd suggest they're saying something more along the lines of, "Children who converse less then their peers are less likely to excel".

There is zero doubting that 'nature vs. nurture' is a complicated question (and a false dichotomy) and I don't think this article is making any claims outside of it's pretty narrow (and pretty interesting) focus.

joelgrus• 13 years ago

I'm totally willing to buy that talking to kids is good for them ("massively positively" strikes me as overstating the case) and that screen time rots their brains and their ability to ... um ... I forget.

But, as a parent, I have experienced that children are born with a ton of individual personality that is highly noticeable within days. It would be pretty much defy logic (as well as genetics) if some sort of predisposition for intelligence weren't part of this.

nightski2• 13 years ago

Could it of been the fact that you were in such an environment, and had such a desire for something different be the source of your inspiration? I am not even talking money necessarily here, but the lack of intellectual stimulation? That made the doses you received all that much more intoxicating?

All I am saying is that a particular environment can affect someone in unexpected ways.

codex2• 13 years ago

Why do you think his other family members did not share this desire?

protomyth• 13 years ago

The title is bunk, but interaction is critical. Also, screenings (starting withe the Denver and going to something like the E-LAP / LAP) are an important item. Correcting an issue at the earliest possible age is important.

Kids are different and are individuals. Genetics, nutrition, interaction, and care all count.

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly.

You don't understand the claim correctly. The claim is that environmental factors (particularly being talked to) are essential to development of intelligence, not that environmental factors determine intelligence entirely.

The distinction between necessary conditions and necessary and sufficient conditions is pretty critical.

tspiteri• 13 years ago

Children are not born smart in much the same way that children are not born strong. Of course, some children are born with more potential smartness, just like some children are born with more potential strength. But they still need the environment to reach their full potential. There are some outliers who become really smart despite the lack of help from their environment, but probably they would have become even smarter in a helpful environment.

clarkm8• 13 years ago

A better analogy is height. Given some minimal level of nutrition, a child's adult height can be extrapolated quite accurately from their parents' genomes. However, if a child grows up in abject poverty, all bets are off. See Judith Rich Harris' The Nurture Assumption [1] for details.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption

mmanfrin• 13 years ago

'I was disadvantaged ipso facto I am simply genetically gifted'.

Could it, perhaps, be that those causal elements in your environment do not work precisely in the way you presume to work? That it's not simply a 'good' upbringing that raises good people? Do you not -- for instance -- have a drive to succeed because of your prior disadvantages in life? Is not the lack of early-life support a driver of your own ambitions?

eli_gottlieb4• 13 years ago

Oh bull. We know intelligence has some genetic component, or else a sufficiently trained monkey would do calculus. We just don't entirely know what "intelligence" is well enough to measure its precise heritability.

xenophanes• 13 years ago

You claim to "demonstrate that it's a lot more complex than just environmental factors". But the correct conclusion from what you said is that you demonstrated that it's a lot more complex than just the environmental factors that you thought of.

You seem to be concluding genetic factors ("always had an intrinsic motivation"). But "not all environment" does not imply "some genetics", that is a false alternative.

There are more possible factors than just environment and genetics. One is human choice (sometimes called "free will", but that term has a lot of baggage). I do not agree with the perspective of attributing everything to factors, rather than a person's own choices.

Genetics certainly have a role in some sense. If you had different genes, you would have been a cat instead of human, and would not have the brain to be a software engineer.

But the general idea that life is very complicated, and the results of people in similar situations vary -- true so far -- simply does not imply (partial) genetic determinism. "Environment", or more generally alternatives to genetic determinism, is/are very subtle and complex. The world is vastly complicated, "environment" refers to a million factors most of which no one documents.

You had, in many respects, a different life and environment than anyone else had. Everyone has a unique environment at high precision. So whatever result you get, what would that prove?

You wonder how a person with several factors against them could be intelligent and successful? You can't think of any ways, besides genetics? There are a million ways. Poverty, non-wonderful discouraging parents, poor teachers, and whatever else are not one's whole life. You met many people, some more helpful than that. You read some books. Even just an ordered list of what books you read up to age 20 might be unique.

People don't start the same, but even if they did, things would quickly branch, again and again. 30 identical students sit in a classroom. The teacher explains something. By sheer randomness, if nothing else, some students understand it today, and some do not understand it yet. Then the next day the teacher gives a second lecture. Everyone hears "the same" lecture, but they have different situations (having understood or not understood yesterday's lesson), so different students experience "the same lecture" in different ways due to their different situations and perspectives. Similarly, in general, people in "the same environment" are not actually having the same experiences.

defdac• 13 years ago

Reading this gave me goose bumps since you managed to describe and explain something I've been thinking about for a long time.

baldfat• 13 years ago

So individually we see exceptions (Which could be seen differently if studied more) In vast numbers we seen factors.

Apples vs Oranges = Looking at Millions vs Individual.

I am a teacher in a city. My students are 100% below poverty line. My student under perform dramatically for their age when they walk through our doors. BUT there are exceptions. You are possibly one exception. BUT when you look at millions of poor vs millions of upper class there is a HUGE difference.

In your line of thought: Poor people are poor due mainly to genetics. I can't believe that for a second due to how many million of poor in US. My children when they leave the school after one or two years are ahead of their peers who do not come to our school.

My two cents.

electrograv2• 13 years ago

Are you claiming people are solely the product of their environment? There is substantial scientific evidence to the contrary.

Keep in mind I'm not saying it's a deterministic inherited thing (it's clearly not). However I believe there is strong evidence that everyone is born with a unique personality and potential. An "environmental chaos theory" does not do justice to unexplained outliers, those with recognized mind-affecting genetic conditions, and many other real-world scenarios.

My situation is even more unusual than you realize. I didn't even meet many people while growing up; throughout my childhood I was almost entirely separated from the outside world (lived secluded in the mountains). Almost no neighbors near by. I never went to public school. Extremely protective parents did not allow us to ever talk to strangers. All this is the same case for my siblings, yet they have no desire to pursue technology, while I do.

Note that by no means am I trying to downplay the importance of environment. I'm simply trying to illustrate that the claim "environment determines 100% of someone's mental and personality development" is empirically wrong.

superEb• 13 years ago

If you had different genes, you would have been a cat instead of human, and would not have the brain to be a software engineer.

While I don't discount the whole of your argument, this is possibly the dumbest thing you could have said.

frobozz• 13 years ago

Doesn't the claim that human choice isn't a product of environment and genetics bring along all the baggage of "free will"? If my choices aren't based on my experiences (i.e how my physical self perceives my environment) or how my brain was initially configured in-utero, then it starts to suggest that I have a supernatural soul that makes those choices for other reasons.

SeanDav• 13 years ago

You admit that your experience is an outlier ("and I'm definitely the only one like this from my family, a clear outlier"), yet you appear to be trying to use your experience to disprove the effect of environment on intelligence.

Ma8ee• 13 years ago

The fact that they were technophobic might have been what saved you, since instead of sitting in front of the TV or computers, people were actually talking to each other.

maxerickson• 13 years ago

Peer group?

alphydan• 13 years ago

The article gives an 'example' where the child of the janitor is 'smarter' than the one of the doctor or college student.

So the question is, did your parents talk to you? (not where your parents astrophysicists?)

> “Now I know I can just have a regular conversation with her,” Adams said. “Just ask her about her day, even if I can’t understand half of it.”

If your parents mostly ignored you, plugged you in the TV, didn't ask you open questions and left you to yourself since a very early age then you may be an exception. (of course your memories from 1 - 5 may not be all that accurate either. What do your parents say about talking to you and making you talk?)

ZeroGravitas2• 13 years ago

Haven't you just excluded nurture ("can't come up with a single environmental influence that explains this") and nature ("I'm definitely the only one like this from my family, a clear outlier")?

If you didn't get if from your family via genes, and you didn't get it from the environment, where else is left? Everyone else seems to be reading your comment as pro-genetics, but given the quote above, I can't see that.

mattmcknight• 13 years ago

Genetics is complicated- it is possible for offspring to develop traits that were not present in either parent.

Filligree• 13 years ago

Chance.

Not saying that's it, but when you have someone self-reporting on a forum like this, claiming to be an outlier, there's probably a good bit of luck involved.

Datsundere• 13 years ago

You probably wouldn't have an intrinsic motivation and desire to be a biologist. You just happened to pick up technology, thought it was cool and enjoyed it.

Besides, humans tend to do things they are forbidden to. Your parents didn't stop you from studying "tech-related things" did they? Well, maybe they did but they must have stopped it once they knew it was futile. Otherwise you wouldn't be what you are now.

If your parents tied you up, beat you up etc. to forbid you from studying tech, then that's an environmental factor. Them not doing so is also an environmental factor.

Believing something is predestined is bullshit. Genetics might give you a better memory, but it doesn't make you a hard worker. Your success depends on your values, priorities and motivation to do so.

Mikeb85• 13 years ago

To see the effects of environment you only need to go to a 3rd world country... Reading is a skill that is generally taught (and very difficult to learn without being taught), so when someone is illiterate, it greatly affects their ability to learn anything. Likewise, people CAN overcome their disadvantages, depending on how severe the disadvantages and how motivated (overcoming negative parents is easier than overcoming illiteracy and being forced to labour in a sweatshop at 10 years of age)...

This article is merely a less extreme example of how taking an active interest in your child's education can help them develop, which is 100% true. For me, personally, I could read/write/speak 2 languages at 4 years of age, in large part thanks to my early childhood environment.

vanderZwan• 13 years ago

Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly. While I'm sure talking to ones children contributes in a massively positive way to their IQ, I think it's extremely inaccurate and ignorant to the existence of real-world outliers to claim that it's the only factor.

If the stunted growth of the pre-lingual deaf that are denied access to a sign language community are any indication, it's probably the most important factor of all, and I think that was the point of the article. I will quote a section of Oliver Sacks' great book "Seeing Voices" that further illustrates this:

The origin of questioning, of an active and questing disposition in the mind, is not something that arises spontaneously, de novo, or directly from the impact of experience; it stems, it is stimulated, by communicative exchange - it requires dialogue, in particular the complex dialogue of mother and child. It is here, [Hilde] Schlesinger finds, that the dichotomies start:

'Mothers talk with their children, do so very differently, and tend to be more often at one side or the other of a series of dichotomies. Some talk with their youngsters and participate primarily in dialogue; some primarily talk at their children. Some mainly support the actions of their offspring, and if not, provide reasons why not; others primarily control the actions of their children, and do not explain why. Some ask genuine questions ... others constraint questions ... Some are prompted by what the child says or does; others by their own inner needs and interests ... Some describe a large world in which events happened in the past and will happen in the future; others comment only about the here and now ... Some mothers mediate the environment by endowing stimuli with meaning [and others do not].'

A terrible power, it would seem, lies with the mother to communicate with her child properly or not; to introduce probing questions such as "How?" "Why?" and "What if?" or replace them with a mindless monologue of "What's this?" "Do that"; to communicate a sense of logic and causality, or to leave everything at the dumb level of unaccountability; to introduce a vivid sense of place and time, or to refer only to the here and now; to introduce a "generalized reflection of reality," a conceptual world that will give coherence and meaning to life, and challenge the mind and emotions of the child, or to leave everything at the level of the ungeneralized, the unquestioned, at something almost below the animal level of the perceptual. Children, it would seem, cannot choose the world they will live in - the mental and emotional, any more than the physical world; they are dependent, in the beginning, on what they are introduced to by their mothers.

Truth of the matter is, we are born with an unfinished brain that requires nurturing interaction with other humans and with language to truly develop. What's saddening is that Hilde Schlesinger's research is already decades old; this book is from 1989. We have known this for ages and society still has to catch up.

gdilla• 13 years ago

I wonder if epigenetics [1] can also explain some of what you're saying. Genes can be regulated in different ways - and that can explain differences in identical Twins.

[1] http://www.livescience.com/25431-gene-regulation-homosexuali...

BigChiefSmokem• 13 years ago

Even poor kids saw the inspiring Apple ads from the 90s...

;)

EliRivers• 13 years ago

Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly.

I don't think it is equivalent. Saying "Children aren't born smart" means no more than that; they don't come out of the womb smart. The degree to which the smartness they develop will depend on an innate potential to be smart and the degree to which it will depend on environmental factors is not addressed by the statement.

drzaiusapelord• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, we live in an age where its politically incorrect to remotely hint at genetic determinism. Men and women are exactly the same. Dumb people and the ultra smart are exactly the same. Articles that contradict this don't get much traction in the media and certainly don't get on the front page of HN.

We're probably a generation or two away before we can accurately look at these issues without activist groups and other political groups declaring them invalid because of misplaced idealism.

Somewhere there's a modern day Galileo saying "but some children are born smart!"

yetanotherphd• 13 years ago

The problem is subtler and worse than simple censorship. A person who concludes the "wrong" casual effect from the data is branded a racist or at least under suspicion. A person who concludes the "right" causal effect might face criticism but at least is not in danger of being labeled an evil person. Such a lopsided set of incentives creates a very strong bias. In my opinion this bias is much stronger than the bias ("racism") that it evolved in response to.

dllthomas• 13 years ago

Intelligence is entirely environmental: if your environment contains nano- and bio-tech that will rebuild your brain to be physically identical with another person's, you will have the same IQ.

igorlev• 13 years ago

I read it as the author of that quote explicitly _choosing_ to say that to make the message simpler to his target audience. I think the author fully understands that in reality it's a mix of both nurture and nature but there's plenty of unfulfilled potential in those kids so telling a little fib will help to push them to maximize their potential...and right now no one can definitively predict what that max is just by looking at their genetics

bryanvick• 13 years ago

Are you implying that Software Engineers are smart?

I ask as a Software Engineer who came from a family of techno-phobic Pipefitters. Don't we just have a particular kind of intelligence, and they may have theirs?

sliverstorm• 13 years ago

Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment"

No it isn't. Think of a young mind as putty. When born, it's just a blob of putty. Children aren't born intelligent. As the child grows, the environment shapes the putty. Some children have different putty than other kids- maybe a little more, a little less, a little firmer, a little more plastic.

Thus, intelligence is determined both by what you have to start with, and your environment. You don't have to be born with intelligence, to be born possessing the raw materials to create great intelligence.

It's not like Usain Bolt was born the fastest runner in the world. He became fast, partly thanks to what he had to work with, and partly thanks to his environment. That's the point here.

joshstella• 13 years ago

You might be interpreting the "claim" more rigidly than is warranted in a popular publication. Personally, I think children are born potentially smart, but intelligence must be developed constantly in my experience. I have found that many people limit their own intelligence by not stressing themselves, and I suspect the same is true for outside influences. There is a reason people associate bookishness with intelligence and I don't think it's a one-way relationship. I have known a few people whom I believe are not potentially smart, but not that many.

Thereasione• 13 years ago

It is "Nurture over Nature" approach. From wiki about Laszlo Polgar, father of Polgar sisters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r :

He is interested in the proper method of rearing children, believing that "geniuses are made, not born".
He home-schooled their three daughters, primarily in chess, and all three went on to become strong players. An early result was Susan's winning the Budapest Chess Championship for girls under 11 at the age of four. Also his daughter, Judit, could defeat him at chess when she was just five.

Judit became the best female chess player ever and was the youngest GM back then when she was 15.

maroonblazer• 13 years ago

Pinker, in "The Blank Slate", cites research that shows that in the nature-vs-nurture debate it appears to be 50/50. Interestingly, of the nurture half, peer group has a much larger influence than parents.

Given that, I'm curious to know what kinds of friends you had growing up and whether they might account for some of your 'intrinsic motivation'.

fiatmoney• 13 years ago

Despite the fact that it may be "well established within academic circles", there is no actual evidence for the contention of the article - even within the article. In particular, for the study they mention, "The full results haven’t been published yet". It's no more than wishful thinking and a convenient hypothesis.

Kudzu_Bob12• 13 years ago

I guess poor children hear fewer words because they don't watch much television.

sandGorgon• 13 years ago

actually this is a question that I had - could mediums like television, or a tablet app make up for the parents not talking ?

Or does it need for the child to speak back ?

DanBC5• 13 years ago

Conversation needs to be interactive and needs to respond to what the child is saying.

You need to repeat what the infant is saying. This is to let the infant know that you've heard them, and understood what they said. It's also to model correct pronunciation without criticising. And you then spin off the conversation to thinking and imagination and play.

"Look! A fire emiGGen!!"

"Yes! It's a fire engine! What do you think they're doing?"

(The 'sing song' voice we use to speak to young children feels silly. But apparently it's important.)

Television and tablets have their place, I guess. Some of the CBeebies content (Children's tv from the BBC) is good. And children need some empty relaxing time.

aestra2• 13 years ago

"Screen time" (TV, tablets) has been demonstrated to be harmful to childhood development in children younger than 2. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends ZERO screen time for children younger than two (this includes background TV).

Some carefully planned educational programs like Sesame Street have shown to be beneficial in older children. Screen time should be minimized though, as it isn't a replacement for interaction.

Does do read the article, it teaches the parent to avoid commands like "put your shoes on" and instead substitute interactive talk like "we are getting ready to go out, what do you need to do to get ready?" That lets the child reply with "shoes" or "coat." It is about interacting with your child.

jmcphers2• 13 years ago

It's the opposite, actually: poor children watch much more television, because their parents don't have time to spend with them.

And it's the words spoken by those parents that matter.

It has been suggested that television isn't itself harmful, and is only correlated with poor outcomes because it displaces time that would otherwise spent on actual interaction.

jmcphers2• 13 years ago

Reference for "poor children watch more television": http://thegrio.com/2012/10/01/study-children-from-african-am...

jpeg_hero• 13 years ago

Serious question HN: I often see parents have an almost instinctual need to feed their children bad information and see if the can detect the falsehoods.

Is this instrumental in teaching "savvy" ?

positr0n• 13 years ago

I do this to my son because small children (<3) are such amazing mimics that it's hard to tell if they truly understand a concept without testing positive and negative responses.

I could make my 2.5yo kid seem like a genius to strangers by asking the right questions. As a trivial example, I know he usually says "yes" when asked a question he doesn't really understand.

jlgreco• 13 years ago

I do this with other people who aren't kids, though I try to keep it to family and close friends so that I don't thrash my reputation too much. Typically I'll pick a theme (say, "citrus fruit, and related topics") for a particular family get-together and see how many semi-plausible but invented facts revolving around that theme I can inject into conversations. Sometimes I'm rewarded by hearing facts that I made up regurgitated years later (one that I am proud of is that orange juice turns an opaque white when pasteurized, and needs to be dyed back to orange (like margarine) for sale.)

Fundamentally I think this is an exercise in creativity; sort of like telling a good campfire story of your own creation. So far as people play this game with kids, I suspect it is because kids are easier to fool so the game is more rewarding.

DanBC5• 13 years ago

No, that's horrible.

There are better ways of teaching children that people lie, and that information is not always accurate.

Besides, people don't always know that they're passing on bad information, so you'd have the situation where someone is passing on stuff that is wrong but saying "no! this isn't part of the game! this stuff is really real!"

dinkumthinkum2• 13 years ago

So many articles about who's smart, why are they smart, blah blah blah. I just wonder if it is just narcissism or its inadequacy or what ... but on some level, if you think you are smart, then just get on with and do "smart things" and if you think you're not "smart enough," get on it with anyway ... pining away about whether Khan Academy can make you the next Einstein or whether you need to be Einstein to understand it is pointless ... Sure we need some people to research education and so forth but I feel like we have that covered by now. :)

eulerphi3• 13 years ago

Any discussion around smartness reminds me of the Big Bang Theory. If one needs to discuss their intellect, well they probably don't have much.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

Solid parenting advice, #1 talk to your children even when they cannot talk, #2 read new books to your children every week. You can always re-read favorites but just keep the new books coming. And then combine #1 and #2 and talk to your children about the books you read.

There is an excellent Radiolab podcast on "Colors" [1] which has (for me) the fairly stunning revelation that you can't see a color you can't name. It starts by looking at the colors used in ancient texts and works its way forward. Some women have more cones than normal and are tetrachromatic so they can see more colors than the normal trichromatic human. But until you name the new colors apparently you can't see them (or recognize them).

People seem to need words to organize their thoughts and reason about things they see or read. The more words you give them, the better able they are to reason.

[1] http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/

lutusp16• 13 years ago

There is an excellent Radiolab podcast on "Colors" [1] which has (for me) the fairly stunning revelation that you can't see a color you can't name. [emphasis added]

Interesting idea, but untestable, therefore unscientific. Do you see why? A color we can't name isn't open to systematic investigation. If we try to get around this by asking a subject to compare the "unseen" color to a color patch, we're only given the "unseeable" color a name by proxy.

This kind of claim is very commonly made by people who don't understand science.

People seem to need words to organize their thoughts and reason about things they see or read.

This argues that animals lacking language also lack the ability to think. Copious evidence disproves this idea. Video of a raven using tools to achieve a purpose:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41Z6Mvjd9w0

The more words you give them, the better able they are to reason.

The better able to reason with words. This is self-referential in the extreme.

lstamour• 13 years ago

I'd suggest that it's not so much any colour is "unseeable" as it is "indistinguishable" for some or most people compared to similar colours. And since our perception of colour is relative to different contexts, that makes the research even harder to account for. That all said, an "unseeable" colour to my mind really refers to how if you put two very, very similar colours together, only some people can tell them apart, and perhaps more often once they've learned to recognize the difference? No idea how close I am to the mark, as I haven't listened to any of this or read much source material. But I would compare it to colourblindness -- just because in a certain context someone can't tell red from green doesn't mean it can't be objectively, absolutely measured as such. Which is to say, just because you can't perceive it yourself doesn't mean it can't be studied: either the perception (false or true) or the absolute measurements of reality.

snowwrestler3• 13 years ago

The point is that "color" does not physically exist[1], it is a construct of human perception and language. Thus you cannot scientifically study color at all--if you try, what you are actually studying is human perception and language.

This is not an unscientific concept, because human perception and language are naturally occurring, albeit incredibly complex, phenomena.

Animals do not see colors, they react to physical phenomena including photons. Humans use the concept of color to describe what animals do.

Certain animals who learn human language can communicate with us about color. That doesn't mean they can't think, it just means that color is a human construct so they need human language to reason about it.

[1] What physically exists are photons across a range of frequencies, but that's not the same thing as color.

Daniel_Newby• 13 years ago

> you can't see a color you can't name
Interesting idea, but untestable, therefore unscientific.

Astonishingly, it has been tested and falsified. Some people have color synesthesia: they experience various patterns as colors. For example, in number-color synesthesia, the person experiences numbers as having colors regardless of their literal visual color. For example, the numeral 7 might appear as a particular shade of green.

Some of these color synesthetes are color blind due to genetic defects in their light detectors. Nonetheless they appear to experience the full range of synesthesic colors including ones they have never seen by direct perception. One person called them Martian colors.

6d0debc0712• 13 years ago

which has (for me) the fairly stunning revelation that you can't see a color you can't name.

Then how did they get named in the first place?

rafcavallaro• 13 years ago

By other cultures. Example: show a set of color swatches all identical blue with one bluish green. Ask participants to indicate the exception. Speakers of languages with a blue-green distinction get it right essentially instantly (< 1 second); native speakers of languages without a blue-green distinction can take as much as 30 seconds and actually get it wrong (I.e., indicate one of the identical blue swatches)

gwern3• 13 years ago

There is an excellent Radiolab podcast on "Colors" [1] which has (for me) the fairly stunning revelation that you can't see a color you can't name.

As I understand, this has been tested and found wanting: you can ask people to take a group of things colored aoi / blue-green, when they have words for neither blue nor green, and ask them to come up with some additional categorization. Instead of categorizing at random or something, they form two distinct groups of... blue and green. And you can predict what colors a language will have based on the number of words it allocates to color (eg. if there's only two color words, they're always going to be black and white https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_... )

ck2• 13 years ago

Children are amazing mimics.

If you interact with them in clever and intelligent ways, they seem to end up thinking similarly.

If you act reserved, prejudice and racist around them, sadly they also learn to mimic that as well.

r0h1n4• 13 years ago

Father of a 3.5 year old brought up using tons of "targeted talking" here: our son has a vocabulary and logical comprehension skills that are significantly beyond his peer group. As a result I'd noticed in the past that he prefers engaging with other adults in conversation over kids his age.

Yesterday was his first PTA meeting and the feedback from his teacher seemed to confirm it too. She narrated an incident when the class was being told about rocket firecracker that light Indian skies during the Diwali festival and our son was explaining to her why a rocket goes up ("it burns gunpowder"), or why it stops after a while ("the gunpowder runs out") and then why it falls back to earth ("gravity"). The rest of his class was more fascinated with the talk about firecrackers.

Her nuanced point was that our son tends to get ahead of ideas and actions by engaging in a to-and-fro conversation about the logic/explanation behind them, thus at times preventing him from enjoying or taking in the idea or action itself or talking with other kids his age.

One of her suggestions was to "explain less" and let our son figure out things on his own (easier said than done, because he's extremely inquisitive and persistent).

The larger point I'm trying to make is that high vocabulary can also act as a barrier in kids engaging with others their age. The article also hints at it, in a manner:

Newell is proud that her daughter can spell her first and last names, recite her address and phone number, recognize and spell colors, and count to 200. She’s also frustrated that more of Alona’s peers can’t do the same.

acchow• 13 years ago

Fascinating.

"Daddy? Why does the firecracker go up?" "That's a very interesting question! Why don't we try to find out. Let's remove individual parts of the firecracker one at a time and find out what makes it go!"

bdamm• 13 years ago

Right, being too far ahead of the curve can become an emotional handicap all its own. Too bad we can't put kids like that together in the same schools.

r0h1n4• 13 years ago

I'm not sure whether you meant that sarcastically. If you did, I'm not at all a supporter of segregated schooling of any kind, be it class, 'abilities' or even neighbourhoods. There's value in kids growing up in a heterogeneous and diverse environment, and my comment was only meant to highlight how having an advanced vocabulary can sometimes hinder that.

jorleif• 13 years ago

Could the teachers statement be rephrased in terms that the kid is developing analytical skills so quickly that they are dominating over the more "experiential" part of socializing with others? It seems that this kind of thing persists into adulthood, because I notice that it is hard to experience and analyze at the same time. For example, it is hard to read a book to experience the story and analyze the narrative structure at the same time. A similar point is described in "Gödel, Escher, Bach" that one can either listen to a musical piece as a whole (experientally) or as individual pieces, such as notes (analytically), but not both at the same time.

While I tend to think analytical skills are more important, it is probably not good to entirely neglect the skills to experience and "live in the moment" either, since that seems to be the foundation of many social skills.

r0h1n4• 13 years ago

That's very well put and I tend to agree with it.

personlurking• 13 years ago

The barrier is something I noticed in people who like to learn for learning's sake. The more I learn, the more I set myself apart from the crowd. I find that seeking out others who like to learn is the only solution (aside from becoming a teacher of some sort, which I'd guess is a bit more lonely yet at the same time self-gratifying).

Knowledge is like money, the more you have the less you have in common with the gen. pop.

aestra2• 13 years ago

My parents were from very disadvantaged backgrounds HOWEVER they did talk to me, a LOT.

I don't know if they knew what they were doing per se, but that's what they did.

Everyone always and still does consider me "smart." I went to college, became a software engineer, etc... Always had a curiosity for everything.

I never realized how exceptional I was until now. All my friends and family that have kids, their kids don't seem to talk hardly at all. They really aren't asked many questions at all. They aren't asked to recite their address, phone number, spell their name, count to 100. The difference between them and me at their age is very dramatic. I know how I acted at that age because videos exist of me since birth.

nether• 13 years ago

Well, I'm a shitty parent, but my kid turned out brilliant.

- No one, ever

I'm a great parent, but my kid's been pretty middling in his academics.

- No one, ever

Just the standard self-selection bias in response to an article with strong ego triggers (being a good parent/person, having high-achieving kids).

foobarbazqux4• 13 years ago

I'm a brilliant kid, but who cares, I had shitty parents.

- A lot of people I know.

SloughFeg• 13 years ago

Believing everyone is tabula rasa when it comes to intelligence is one of those white lies society tells itself to make itself feel better. Of course the environment one grows up in is important but this article is kidding itself into thinking it is the primary factor.

We inherit so many other traits from our parents, why should intelligence be any different? What makes it so special that it requires a convoluted explanation that rests on so many assumptions?

bayesianhorse3• 13 years ago

Why should it be different from other traits? Well, we don't really understand the genetics of physical height. Why should we be so certain we understand the genetics of intelligence when we barely even understand intelligence itself?

What do we know? Getting Malaria in childhood reduces IQ by a few points. Resistance to Malaria is partly genetic. Are these genetic factors now a genetic basis for Intelligence? Shouldn't we just vaccinate the children and eliminate the problem?

We know that in developing countries, every month in school increases IQ and earning potential. Should we assume and accept genetic factors in school attendance as inevitable or should we just require attendance?

We know that in Africa, using cheap deworming agents in school children two times a year will increase their intelligence and school attendance. Are there genetic factors in resistance against worms? Does it matter where the particular ethnicity lives? Sure. Should we care? Not really.

The image that emerges is: Once you hold the environment pretty constant, as has been done in twin studies (regarding to the above known factors at least), IQ is largely genetic.

But making decisions on the basis of assumptions about the genetic basis intelligence is at the very least quite stupid.

samstave• 13 years ago

I have (3) children. I had heard this statement before they were born. I have made a oncerted effort to verbally engage my kids all the time.

I have some smart kids. I believe this very much. I have a 9yo 2yo and a newborn.

Both my 9 and 2yo are very smart, however, there is an important piece to this that needs comment: Teaching your children attention discipline. I have been using computers daily since 3rd grade. I am 38 years old. I have chronic ADHD.

It is important to engage your kids conversationally from the time they are born, but to also ensure they can sit and focus. WIth my older daughter, this was accomplished by requiring reading sessions and zero screen time daily.

schoper• 13 years ago

Except for deaf children, who seem to fall along the same IQ distribution as hearing children. And rich children seem to inherit their parents IQs instead of their Guatemalan nannies' IQs.

But feel free to go on believing that genes don't do anything. God just must have created everyone equal.

clarkm8• 13 years ago

That's actually not true -- congenital deaf children average almost a standard dev below average on IQ tests. However, your overall point still stands, as non-deaf children of deaf parents do just fine.

ordinary• 13 years ago

Conversation need not be audio-based.

atmosx• 13 years ago

I'm not sure how you can do this kind of social research and be absolutely sure about the results you'll find, apart from taking a sample, measuring and trying to concatenate one fact with the other.

What nobody knows is the exact weight of this factor in the unknown equation which governs human intelligence. Hence from a scientific point of view:

"Those who assume hypotheses as first principles of their speculations […] may indeed form an ingenious romance, but a romance it will still be." - Roger Cotes.

Excerpt from the preface to Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, second edition, 1713.

x0054• 13 years ago

I agree with the article but the title on HN is terrible, and needs to be changed. The article says that talking with, and reading to, your kids improves their verbal skills and makes them able to better process information. Who could argue with that? My mom would read to me all the time when I was younger. She would read to me books she liked, classic scifi and such. I enjoyed them very much, even though they weren't written for kids. She would talk about the stories with me and explain some things I did not get. I think that helped quite a bit with my language skills. However, that's in noway negates the fact that some kids are simply smarter genetically then others. Paying attention to your kid and talking with them would greatly increase their abilities, but all kids aren't borne equal, and I don't think the article makes that argument, unlike the title. It should be changed to "Talking to kids greatly increases their cognitive abilities."

I think having kids be exposed to several other languages as soon as they are borne, and reading to them books you personally like and find interesting helps them immensely (obviously filter out explicit content, old classics are usually good). It's also important not to dumb things down for kids. Basically Teletubbies = bad, family friendly comedy in a foreign language = good.

In a side note I also find it infuriating how economists always make an argument that women should go back into the workforce after having kids, because its good for the family and for the economy. But what about the kid. I don't want to single out women, but I think either the mother or the father should take at least 5 years off, after the birth of their child, to raise their child, instead of hiring a nanny. I understand that it's not fair to always ask the women to do it, but some one in the family should. It's not always an option, but more often then not its the children of the wealthy that you see being raised by nannies. Ok, that's getting off topic.

ckuehne• 13 years ago

None of the results in this article warrants the conclusion in the title.

The fact that "children from affluent families were starting to speak after implant surgery, those from low-income families lagged behind." can simply be explained by genetics. I.e., affluent parents tend to have affluent children, even if those children are raised by other parents [1, 2].

All the cited study does is measure how much the vocabulary of the _caregivers_ increased due to linguistic feedback methods.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture [2] E.g., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21425893

Theodores2• 13 years ago

I think this article is about much more than nature vs. nurture and it doesn't deserve to be trolled that way.

We can learn a lot about ourselves, language and how we learn from understanding a bit about those born deaf. It really is a big deal and Oliver Sacks gets to the heart of the matter in his excellent book 'Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf':

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0330523643/

A highly recommended read for anyone on HN...

The article also mentions nannies. A problem they have that the parents aren't ever made aware of is what happens when the child uses big meaningful words for the first time. The nanny wants the parents to be the first to hear these words rather than merely report back to the parents that said big meaningful words have been said. So praise cannot always be given by a nanny when praise is deserved.

Although the article says that quality conversation is important, the metric seems to be quantity of words. After a certain developmental stage I am not sure how helpful quantity actually is. There are plenty of adults that I have met over the years that can babble on and babble on. If you are actually trying to concentrate on something then having a constant babbler around is just so not what you need. I consider myself to be a bit of a rambler but not a constant babbler. However, I cannot engage with a toddler in the way a constant babbler can. I go quiet on the two year old whereas the babbler does not.

Further down the line I think that the dinner table offers an amazing opportunity for children to improve their vocabulary, engage in conversation, learn when to listen and when to talk. This is particularly the case when parents have adult guests and allow young children to be on the same table eating the same food. Here the nurture comes from extended family and friends. I feel slightly sorry for friends that did not get this during their formative years, even if they did have more time in restaurants (which are posh and grown up).

cateye• 13 years ago

The never ending nature versus nurture debate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture

Ras_• 13 years ago

I've seen many similarities with the group of friends I grew up with. Did we grow up and become more like each other or was our similarity (temperament, values) something that brought us together in the first place?

For example I was the first in our father's side of family to go into higher ed, but everyone in my group of pre-18 school friends ended up there. Many other groups in our school were characterized by other things like marrying young or seeking traditional blue collar jobs.

At least there was plenty of time for conversations to mold our thoughts. Parents might actually account for less than friends.

rsheridan63• 13 years ago

I would think little kids today don't get talked to as much as they did in the past because many or most have single mothers with jobs and few or no siblings, whereas the baby boomers had a dad and a stay at home mom and lots of siblings. And they had nothing to do but talk to each other, since you couldn't spend all day staring at screens then.

If this is correct, developments in the last several decades should have been a cognitive disaster. Afaik they weren't.

cdf• 13 years ago

Interesting tidbit: The Chinese phrase for smart, "聪明" quite literally means "clear hearing".

jug6ernaut• 13 years ago

This may have already been mentioned, but (at least in my opinion) its not as much about conversation as it is about stimuli.

Stimulating children's brains through conversation && || other means is what allows/makes/(stimulates) the brain to grow and learn.

ogig• 13 years ago

I feel something is wrong about this article. In it early language is depicted as a fundamental block of building intelligence. I also think that's true, so i find shocking that a cochlear implant is presented as a first step to enable this in deaf children.

Signs language is the tool they should be using and writting about. Childrens can comunicate earlier than they can make proper sounds (talk). By teaching sign language early to deaf AND hearing kid, you have a complex language they can use earlier than spoken languages. Check this video of a 2 years old having an engaged conversation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o8Z2lzS764

My wife is an experienced sign language interpreter and I lost hearing of one ear so we both are in contact with deaf people. We are actively teaching our hearing 8 months old daugther signs. I can already notice how she stares at me when moving my hands around, but this is probably a first time dad thing ;)

On the other hand, cochlear implants create a low definition channel compared to sign language, it's created later, and the surgery it's not easy. I've met plenty of deaf people with they implants permanently turned off. The electrical impulses generated by the implant are a minimal fraction of what a normal ear does. It's still a very rudimentary tech.

I'm not saying parents should not implant their deafs kids. I wouldn't, but if they choose to they shouldn't private the child of early sign language because of it.

known• 13 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Is_Father_to_the_Man

bnolsen• 13 years ago

It also helps to have an engaged and decedt dad around. As a generalization, moms tend to be more protective and dads tend to be more "come on and grow up already".

Children need to be treated like they are real people and encouraged to make good, responsible decisions of their own accord, not just be ordered around like they are troublesome objects. That means parents need to be responsible stewards of their children.

hosh• 13 years ago

Talking to kids like an adult -- what a concept!

I'm glad this article came out, and getting this method more in the mainstream.

thehme• 13 years ago

This is a wonderful article and I am glad that Slate published it. Wouldn't it be great if there were more people like Dr. Suskind working in all sectors of our world?! Her research and findings are definitely something I have seen firsthand, but I am glad to learn that we have research now that proves my observations. In fact, I believe that people who work for an hourly wage and who work long hours to make ends meet, do not have the time/energy to cook for their families. Instead, with their low income, they look to find easy and quick ways to feed themselves and their families, sometimes resorting to fast food, if not always. In turn, the children in these families grow up thinking this is the way things are done and never learn to cook for themselves. All they have been taught is to eat what comes out of a can or box, instead of preparing themselves and egg and toast. Consequently you have generation after generation not learning to cook, to eat fast food, and this, to me, is the reason why we have been steadily becoming the most obese and disease plagued people in the world. I hope that soon there will be solid research to show that my observation is correct, but more importantly that like developing good language skills, being healthy is something attainable by even those in low income households through simple discipline.

goggles99• 13 years ago

This claim can be dis-proven by common sense. Lets look at families with more kids. Each kid should be smarter and smarter because the other kids talk and converse.

Kids who go to day care with other older, talking kids should be brilliant.

I am sure that there are many other no-brainier situations when kids hear more words and have more conversations and are not smarter as well.

Why do these big scientific articles like this always seem so trivially flawed and ridiculous? Is is just me?

abdulhaq• 13 years ago

30 million words fewer in 3 years?? That's 27397 words per day... at 12 waking hours per day for a child it's about 38 words per minute - I find it hard to believe.

RachelF• 13 years ago

Me too. There's some big mistake in their data here.

stephenbez• 13 years ago

I was curious too. To get a back of the envelope calculation on how fast people talk I watched a talk show and counted how many words they said in 1 minute. It was 103, so it seems possible.

waldrews• 13 years ago

“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius”. - Gibbon

tsotha• 13 years ago

Anybody who's seen a family with more than one child knows environment isn't the primary determinant of intelligence. I know the blank slate theory is comfortable from a political standpoint, but to quote Orwell, "You have to be an intellectual to believe such nonsense. No ordinary man could be such a fool."

aaron695• 13 years ago

I think things from the study like this are probably more relevant.

"In addition to a lack of exposure to these 30 million words, the words a child from a low-income family has typically mastered are often negative directives, meaning words of discouragement. The ratios of encouraging versus discouraging feedback found within the study, when extrapolated, evidences that by age four, the average child from a family on welfare will hear 125,000 more words of discouragement than encouragement. When compared to the 560,000 more words of praise as opposed to discouragement that a child from a high-income family will receive, this disparity is extraordinarily vast."

jgalt212• 13 years ago

Can some please find out what Billy Ray Valentine thinks about the nature vs nurture debate?

Hold up! Hey, who's been putting out their Kools on my floor?

gaoshan• 13 years ago

Personally I suspect that children are born with varying levels of intelligence (yes, some people are born less intelligent than others) and that the sort of nurturing one provides has a strong effect on how that intelligence develops. I suspect that nurturing can make up a lot of ground but that we do not all start from an even playing field.

becauseICan• 13 years ago

Alternatively: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by breathing air.

Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

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